That's the good news for Cyrus Kar, “an aspiring filmmaker from Los Angeles ... freed Sunday in Baghdad ... after more than seven weeks in solitary confinement in a military prison in Iraq.” The bad news, though, “American officials told him [was] that his United States passport had been destroyed in the course of an effort to test its authenticity ... and ... he might have to wait a week before a new one could be issued.”

Kar, who was born in Iran, is a naturalized US citizen and former US Navy man who went to Iraq to shoot a film about his famous Persian namesake, Cyrus the Great. Unfortunately, he and his cameraman were in a cab that was stopped at a checkpoint, and in the trunk of which were found 35 washing machine timers, and, needless to say, no other washing machine parts. Obviously the timers were destined for use to trigger delayed detonation of improvised explosive devices. In Iraq, when your clothes are dry, everybody hears about it.

Wrong place, wrong time to make a movie. Kar spent his seven weeks in a 5-by-7 foot cell, down the hall from two famous captives: Tariq Aziz, Saddam's former main man, and one of Saddam's brothers. But for the efforts of his family, who are smart and well-connected (see San Jose Mercury article below), he'd still be there.

The military claims Kar has been released, but I'm sure he'll be withholding judgment until he is back in his own home, drinking a cold brew. War makes fools of everyone.

In Iraq war, justice for the savvy, not all.By Scott Herhold Mercury News

It took serendipity for Cyrus Kar's sister to learn that the aspiring filmmaker was being held in Iraq by American forces. But it was no accident when he was released. That took a push on the levers of power.

A week after the 44-year-old San Jose State University graduate was booked into a detention camp near Baghdad, a Red Cross worker called Kar's sister, Anna, who happened to work for the Red Cross in Nairobi, Kenya.

The colleague told Anna that he had just seen her brother in Iraq. ``I said, `Oh, great, what a coincidence that you met him over there,'' Anna Kar told the New York Times.

The colleague straightened her out. He hadn't just bumped into Kar, a Navy veteran who had gone to Iraq to film a documentary. The Red Cross worker had visited Kar officially at Camp Cropper, an American military jail.

That news — and a call from Kar himself to his aunt in Los Angeles the same day — launched the family on a six-week quest to free the filmmaker from the suspicions of American military authorities.

They succeeded last weekend, when Kar and his cameraman were released. But his saga reveals two truths about our Iraq misadventure.

Bureaucratic war

First, we have more to fear from bureaucracy than from outright cruelty by American forces. Second, justice in the war on terror often depends on who is the most savvy.

``The lesson here is he had a family who knew what do to and they called us to get involved,'' said Mark Rosenbaum, the executive director of the ACLU Southern California Chapter, which filed suit to free Kar. ``He was very fortunate.''

Born in Tehran but raised in Washington state, Kar got a degree in marketing at San Jose State while moonlighting as a bartender. For much of the '90s, he worked in the valley's electronics industry.

After the collapse of the boom, he moved to Los Angeles and pursued a long-cherished project: a film on Cyrus the Great, an early Persian ruler known for his progressiveness.

``His goal of making the documentary was his full-time job,'' said his cousin Shahrzad Folger in a court declaration.

That passion led Kar this May to Iraq, where he hoped to film archeological sites at Babylon, an ancient city that Cyrus conquered in 538 BC. On his first day in Iraq, May 17, Kar and his cameraman climbed into the wrong taxi. It was stopped by Iraqi authorities, who found several washing machine timers in the trunk. The timers are commonly used in bombs.

FBI investigation

Kar and his cameraman protested that they knew nothing about the timers, that they were merely passengers. To no avail. They were both put in jail. And the FBI launched an investigation of the filmmaker, searching his Los Angeles apartment and seizing his personal computer.

His family knew nothing of this until a week later, when Kar called his aunt and the Red Cross worker called Nairobi. In some ways, the real story is how they responded.

Kar's cousin Folger, a University of Southern California graduate, took control of the effort. She called Sen. Barbara Boxer's office and the Navy. She called the State Department. She even tried a New York number for the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. All without much result.

An FBI investigator assured the family in mid-June that Kar had been cleared, passing a lie detector test. But when he still wasn't released, Folger contacted the ACLU.

And it was through a habeas corpus lawsuit — literally, produce the body — that the case got attention. When the story ran on the front page of the New York Times last week, you had the sense that the family had touched the real levers of power. Kar was released not long afterward.

Kar told reporters that although he nothing against U.S. forces, he had been treated as a ``mushroom'' — thrown into a dark spot, fed garbage, forgotten by the bureaucracy. His family knew enough to call the right people. But what about folks who aren't as savvy?

During the last few weeks, we've discovered a new Karl Rove. Smiling, silent, and submissive, moving in Bush's wind-shadow, apparently the only safe place for him in the media universe. Scott McLellan exceeded all previous standards as an affable stonewaller on July 11th, when this press briefing came down. Logic is clearly not the first weapon of the publicity man, nor does it much seem to aid the reporters attempting to wield it.

Q Does the President stand by his pledge to fire anyone involved in the leak of a name of a CIA operative?

MR. McCLELLAN: Terry, I appreciate your question. I think your question is being asked relating to some reports that are in reference to an ongoing criminal investigation. The criminal investigation that you reference is something that continues at this point. And as I've previously stated, while that investigation is ongoing, the White House is not going to comment on it. The President directed the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation, and as part of cooperating fully with the investigation, we made a decision that we weren't going to comment on it while it is ongoing.

Q Excuse me, but I wasn't actually talking about any investigation. But in June of 2004, the President said that he would fire anybody who was involved in this leak, to press of information. And I just want to know, is that still his position?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, but this question is coming up in the context of this ongoing investigation, and that's why I said that our policy continues to be that we're not going to get into commenting on an ongoing criminal investigation from this podium. The prosecutors overseeing the investigation had expressed a preference to us that one way to help the investigation is not to be commenting on it from this podium. And so that's why we are not going to get into commenting on it while it is an ongoing investigation, or questions related to it.

Q Scott, if I could — if I could point out, contradictory to that statement, on September 29th, 2003, while the investigation was ongoing, you clearly commented on it. You were the first one who said, if anybody from the White House was involved, they would be fired. And then on June 10th of 2004, at Sea Island Plantation, in the midst of this investigation is when the President made his comment that, yes, he would fire anybody from the White House who was involved. So why have you commented on this during the process of the investigation in the past, but now you've suddenly drawn a curtain around it under the statement of, “We're not going to comment on an ongoing investigation”?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, John, I appreciate the question. I know you want to get to the bottom of this. No one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the President of the United States. And I think the way to be most helpful is to not get into commenting on it while it is an ongoing investigation. That's something that the people overseeing the investigation have expressed a preference that we follow. And that's why we're continuing to follow that approach and that policy.

Now, I remember very well what was previously said. And at some point, I will be glad to talk about it, but not until after the investigation is complete.

Q. So could I just ask, when did you change your mind to say that it was okay to comment during the course of an investigation before, but now it's not?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think maybe you missed what I was saying in reference to Terry's question at the beginning. There came a point when the investigation got underway when those overseeing the investigation asked that it would be their — or said that it would be their preference that we not get into discussing it while it is ongoing. I think that's the way to be most helpful to help them advance the investigation and get to the bottom of it.

Q Scott, can I ask you this; did Karl Rove commit a crime?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, David, this is a question relating to an ongoing investigation, and you have my response related to the investigation. And I don't think you should read anything into it other than we're going to continue not to comment on it while it's ongoing.

Q Do you stand by your statement from the fall of 2003 when you were asked specifically about Karl and Elliott Abrams and Scooter Libby, and you said, “I've gone to each of those gentlemen, and they have told me they are not involved in this” — do you stand by that statement?

MR. McCLELLAN: And if you will recall, I said that as part of helping the investigators move forward on the investigation we're not going to get into commenting on it. That was something I stated back near that time, as well.

Q Scott, I mean, just — I mean, this is ridiculous. The notion that you're going to stand before us after having commented with that level of detail and tell people watching this that somehow you decided not to talk. You've got a public record out there. Do you stand by your remarks from that podium, or not?

MR. McCLELLAN: And again, David, I'm well aware, like you, of what was previously said, and I will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time. The appropriate time is when the investigation —

Q Why are you choosing when it's appropriate and when it's inappropriate?

MR. McCLELLAN: If you'll let me finish —

Q No, you're not finishing — you're not saying anything. You stood at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now we find out that he spoke out about Joseph Wilson's wife. So don't you owe the American public a fuller explanation? Was he involved, or was he not? Because, contrary to what you told the American people, he did, indeed, talk about his wife, didn't he?

MR. McCLELLAN: David, there will be a time to talk about this, but now is not the time to talk about it.

Q Do you think people will accept that, what you're saying today?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, I've responded to the question.

Go ahead, Terry.

Q Well, you're in a bad spot here, Scott, because after the investigation began, after the criminal investigation was underway, you said — October 10th, 2003, “I spoke with those individuals, Rove, Abrams and Libby, as I pointed out, those individuals assured me they were not involved in this.” From that podium. That's after the criminal investigation began. Now that Rove has essentially been caught red-handed peddling this information, all of a sudden you have respect for the sanctity of the criminal investigation?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, that's not a correct characterization Terry, and I think you are well aware of that. We know each other very well, and it was after that period that the investigators had requested that we not get into commenting on an ongoing criminal investigation. And we want to be helpful so that they can get to the bottom of this, because no one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the President of the United States. I am well aware of what was said previously. I remember well what was said previously. And at some point, I look forward to talking about it. But until the investigation is complete, I'm just not going to do that.

Q Do you recall when you were asked —

Q Wait, wait — so you're now saying that after you cleared Rove and the others from that podium, then the prosecutors asked you not to speak anymore, and since then, you haven't?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, you're continuing to ask questions relating to an ongoing criminal investigation, and I'm just not going to respond any further.

Q When did they ask you to stop commenting on it, Scott? Can you peg down a date?

MR. McCLELLAN: Back at that time period.

Q Well, then the President commented on it nine months later. So was he not following the White House plan?

MR. McCLELLAN: John, I appreciate your questions. You can keep asking them, but you have my response.

Go ahead, Dave.

Q We are going to keep asking them. When did the President learn that Karl Rove had had a conversation with the President — with a news reporter about the involvement of Joseph Wilson's wife and the decision to send —

MR. McCLELLAN: I've responded to the questions.

Q When did the President learn that Karl Rove had —

MR. McCLELLAN: I've responded to the questions, Dick.

Go ahead.

Q After the investigation is completed, will you then be consistent with your word and the President's word that anybody who was involved would be let go?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, after the investigation is complete, I will be glad to talk about it at that point.

Q And a follow-up. Can you walk us through why, given the fact that Rove's lawyer has spoken publicly about this, it is inconsistent with the investigation, that it compromises the investigation to talk about the involvement of Karl Rove, the Deputy Chief of Staff?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, those overseeing the investigation expressed a preference to us that we not get into commenting on the investigation while it's ongoing. And that was what they requested of the White House. And so I think in order to be helpful to that investigation, we are following their direction.

Q. Scott, there's a difference between commenting on an investigation and taking an action —

MR. McCLELLAN: Go ahead, Goyal.

Q. Can I finish, please?

MR. McCLELLAN: You can come — I'll come back to you in a minute. Go ahead, Goyal.

Q. Scott, today also the President spoke about the war on terrorism and also, according to — report, there was bombings in London and also bombings in India, and at both places, al Qaeda was involved. According to the India report and press reports, a Pakistani television said that Osama bin Laden is there alive and they have spoken with him, and his group is still — as far as terrorism around the globe is concerned. So now the major bombings after 9/11 took place in London, and more are about to come, according to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. They are still — and again, the President is doing a great job as far as fighting against terrorism is concerned. But where do we stand now, really? Where do we go from London, as far as terrorism is concerned? How far we can go after Osama bin Laden now to catch him? Because he's still in Pakistan.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, what occurred in London is a grim reminder that we are at war on terrorism. We are waging a comprehensive war on terrorism. You heard the President talk earlier today to the FBI personnel and others who are at Quantico, and the President talked about our global war on terrorism. He talked about our strategy for taking the fight to the enemy, staying on the offensive, and working to spread freedom and democracy to defeat the ideology of hatred that terrorists espouse.

And the President pointed back to the 20th century. He pointed out that in World War II, freedom prevailed over fascism and Nazism. And in the Cold War, freedom prevailed over communism. Freedom is a powerful force for defeating an ideology such as the one that the terrorists espouse. And that's why it's so important to continue working to advance freedom and democracy in the broader Middle East. And that's what we will continue to do. And the President also talked about the great progress we've made at home to protect the home front.

The families and friends of those who lost their lives in London are — continue to be in our thoughts and prayers. We know what it's like to be attacked on our soil. And that's why the President made a decision that we were going to take the fight to the enemy to try to disrupt plots and prevent attacks from happening in the first place. And that's exactly what we are doing. But we're also going to work with the free world to support the advance of freedom and democracy in a dangerous region of the world. For too long we ignored what was going on in the Middle East. We accepted and tolerated dictatorships in exchange for peace and stability, and we got neither. As the President said, free nations are peaceful societies. And that's why it's so important that we continue to support the advance of freedom, because that's how you ultimately defeat the ideology of hatred and oppression that terrorists espouse.

Carl, go ahead. I'll come to you, David, in a second.

Q. Does the President continue to have confidence in Mr. Rove?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, these are all questions coming up in the context of an ongoing criminal investigation. And you've heard my response on this.

Q. So you're not going to respond as to whether or not the President has confidence in his Deputy Chief of Staff?

MR. McCLELLAN: Carl, you're asking this question in the context of an ongoing investigation. And I would not read anything into it other than I'm simply not going to comment on an ongoing —

Q. Has there been — has there been any change —

MR. McCLELLAN: — investigation.

Q. Has there been any change or is there a plan for Mr. Rove's portfolio to be altered in any way?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, you have my response to these questions.

Go ahead. Sarah, go ahead.

Q. A secret British memo says plans are underway for a significant troop withdrawal from Iraq early next year. Does the President agree with those plans? And even though he doesn't want to give an exact date —

MR. McCLELLAN: Who? Who has a plan? I'm sorry.

Q. With the plans of the — a secret British memo says plans are underway for a significant troop withdrawal from Iraq early next year. Does the President agree with those plans, even though he doesn't want to give an exit date? Is there White House and Pentagon pressure to draw down U.S. troop levels in Iraq as soon as possible?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think you're referring to reports of a British memo talking about reduction in troop forces. First of all, the military always plans for all contingencies. And that's something our military is always looking at — what are the various contingencies, and how do we meet our commitments and complete the mission. The President has made it clear that we are going to complete the mission, and then our troops will return home with the honor that they deserve.

We always look to — the President always looks to his commanders on the ground to make assessments in terms of what troops levels are needed, and the commanders on the ground will have the troops that they need to complete the mission. But the commanders have said that that will be based on the conditions on the ground, it will be based on circumstances on the ground, so you're always looking at the circumstances on the ground.

Now, one part of our strategy for victory in Iraq is to train and equip the Iraqi security forces. As we stand up the Iraqi forces, we will stand down coalition and American forces. And the President talked about that again today. That's part of our two-track strategy for succeeding in Iraq. And what you're seeing now is that the number of Iraqi forces that are trained and equipped continues to go up. They are the largest contingent providing for security in Iraq. And we continue to expand those forces. But not only are we expanding the numbers, we're strengthening their capability. And the commanders have talked about that, as well. So there's good progress being made there. The President referenced some of that in his remarks today.

Now I'll go back to David. Go ahead.

Q. There's a difference between commenting publicly on an action and taking action in response to it. Newsweek put out a story, an email saying that Karl Rove passed national security information on to a reporter that outed a CIA officer. Now, are you saying that the President is not taking any action in response to that? Because I presume that the prosecutor did not ask you not to take action, and that if he did, you still would not necessarily abide by that; that the President is free to respond to news reports, regardless of whether there's an investigation or not. So are you saying that he's not going to do anything about this until the investigation is fully over and done with?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think the President has previously spoken to this. This continues to be an ongoing criminal investigation. No one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the President of the United States. And we're just not going to have more to say on it until that investigation is complete.

Q. But you acknowledge that he is free, as President of the United States, to take whatever action he wants to in response to a credible report that a member of his staff leaked information. He is free to take action if he wants to.

Q. Scott, since President William Howard Taft became Chief Justice after his presidency, you would not rule out the President nominating former law school professor Bill Clinton to the Supreme Court, would you? And if you wouldn't, we can report that President Clinton is under consideration, can't we?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, that's the first time I've heard that name suggested. I know there are a lot of names being suggested out there, and you know that I'm not going to get into speculating about any particular names.

Q. One follow-up. Considering the widespread interest and the absolutely frantic Democrat reaction to Karl Rove's excellent speech to conservatives last month, does the President hope that Karl will give a lot more speeches?

MR. McCLELLAN: He continues to give speeches. He was traveling this weekend talking about the importance of strengthening Social Security. And he has continued to go out and give speeches.

Let me back up, though. You brought up the Supreme Court, and I would like to update you, in terms of where we are in terms of consultations with the Senate, because the White House consultations have been wide and deep with the United States Senate. I think you heard Senator Hatch yesterday talk about how, in his 29 years in the United States Senate, he has not seen anything like this when it comes to the level of consultation that is going on. It is unprecedented, in his words, and he's certainly been around the Senate for a long time to see the type of consultations that go on.

But we have reached out to more than 60 senators now, and we have actually consulted with most of those. We are continuing those outreach calls and meetings to listen to what senators have to say and hear what their views are. The President —

Q. Did you try to reach all the senators?

MR. McCLELLAN: The President has reached out, himself. The President looks forward to meeting tomorrow with four distinguished leaders in the Senate. He will be listening to what their views are. The President is not prejudging anything. He wants to hear what their views are and hear what they have to say as we move forward on a Supreme Court nominee. The President —

Q. Does he want to hear names, Scott?

MR. McCLELLAN: The President welcomes people suggesting names. That's part of the consultation process. But not only are we going to consult before the nomination is made, but we'll continue to consult once the nomination is made.

We've also consulted with more than half of the Democratic conference in the United States Senate. We've spoken with every member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And we are continuing that outreach as we speak. A number of White House staffers have been reaching out to individual members, and the President is going to be sitting down and meeting with those four leaders tomorrow.

Q. What does he think of Specter — what does he think of Specter suggesting O'Connor as Chief?

MR. McCLELLAN: Look, Les, there are going to be a lot of suggestions made. I'm just not going to get into speculating about potential nominees. The President takes this responsibility very seriously. And that's why he is going through a deliberate and thorough process. That's why he has instructed us to reach out to senators and get their views and hear what they have to say about a potential nominee.

The President hopes that we can move forward in a dignified and civilized way. You heard him express that. It's important to elevate the discourse as we move forward. The American people want this nomination process to be something that we can all be proud of. And the President is going to select the nominee who meets the criteria that he outlined — that is someone of high intellect, someone of integrity, someone who — someone of great legal ability and someone who will faithfully interpret our Constitution and our laws and not try to make law from the bench.

Q. Will the President discuss his names with Democrats, as well, and get their thoughts on those names?

MR. McCLELLAN: Go ahead, April. Go ahead.

Q. Scott, what was the President's interaction today with Karl Rove? Did they discuss this current situation? And understanding that Karl Rove was the architect of the President's win for the second term in the Oval Office, how important is Karl Rove to this administration currently?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, this is coming at it from —

Q. It has nothing to do with what you just said.

MR. McCLELLAN: This is still coming at the same question relating to reports about an ongoing investigation, and I think I've responded to it.

Q. Who is Karl Rove as it relates to this administration?

MR. McCLELLAN: Do you have questions on another topic?

Q. No, no, no, no. Who is Karl Rove as it relates to this current administration?

Q. Is the President going to make any outreach to conservative groups on the Supreme Court nominee and listen to their point of view at all?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we are listening to what others have to say, not only in the United States Senate, but outside, as well. And there are a lot of people expressing their views right now.

Q. — seemed to get annoyed last week —

MR. McCLELLAN: I wouldn't try to label anything.

Go ahead.

Q. Scott, I think you're barrage today in part because we — it is now clear that 21 months ago, you were up at this podium saying something that we now know to be demonstratively false. Now, are you concerned that in not setting the record straight today that this could undermine the credibility of the other things you say from the podium?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, I'm going to be happy to talk about this at the appropriate time. Dana, you all — you and everybody in this room, or most people in this room, I should say, know me very well and they know the type of person that I am. And I'm confident in our relationship that we have. But I will be glad to talk about this at the appropriate time, and that's once the investigation is complete. I'm not going to get into commenting based on reports or anything of that nature.

Q. Scott, at this point, are we to consider what you've said previously, when you were talking about this, that you're still standing by that, or are those all inoperative at this point?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, you're still trying to come at this from a different angle, and I've responded to it.

Q. Are you standing by what you said previously?

MR. McCLELLAN: You've heard my response.

Go ahead.

Q. The six-party talks are finally to be resumed on July 27th. The United States policy has been to demand complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of nuclear weapon by the North Korea to ensure nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. If North Korea does not agree to that, what would happen to the six-party talks?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, first of all, we are pleased that North Korea is coming back to the talks. The five parties put a proposal on the table, and we believe it's now time to make progress on what we outlined. It's important for North Korea to return to the talks prepared to talk in a serious way about how to move forward on that proposal. The goal is not for North Korea to come back to the talks; the goal is a denuclearized peninsula. That's a goal that we all share. And we need to make progress toward that goal. That's why it's important that when North Korea comes back, that they are prepared to respond to the proposal and move forward in a serious way to make progress toward that goal.

In the discussions recently with North Korea, they have expressed a commitment to a denuclearized peninsula and making progress toward that goal. These meetings or this upcoming six-party talks is a way to move forward toward that goal. And we want to move forward in a serious way.

Q. It is reported the United States would offer some new incentives to the North Korea. Would you tell us, what is the contents of new —

MR. McCLELLAN: I think any such impression is wrong. We have put a proposal on the table along with the other four parties in the talks. That is a proposal that was — it's a serious proposal. It was put on the table by the five parties for North Korea to consider and respond to. Now North Korea is committed to coming back to the talks with a date certain. And when they come back later this month, we want them to be prepared to talk in a serious way about how to move forward on that proposal. That's the proposal that is on the table. It was a proposal that was outlined to North Korea in the last round of talks over a year ago by the other five parties.

Go ahead, Alexis.

Q. When the leak investigation is concluded, does the President believe it might be important for his credibility, the credibility of the White House, to release all the information voluntarily that was submitted as part of the investigation, so the American public could see what the — what transpired inside the White House at the time?

MR. McCLELLAN: This is an investigation being overseen by a special prosecutor. And I think those are questions best directed to the special prosecutor. Again, this is an ongoing matter; I'm just not going to get into commenting on it further at this time. At the appropriate time, when it's complete, then I'll be glad to talk about it at that point.

Q. Have you in the White House considered whether that would be optimum to release as much information and make it as open a process —

MR. McCLELLAN: It's the same type of question. You're asking me to comment on an ongoing investigation, and I'm not going to do that.

Q. I'm actually talking about the communication strategy, which is a little different.

MR. McCLELLAN: Understood. The President directed the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation. And that's what he expects people in the White House to do.

Q. And he would like to that when it is concluded, cooperate fully with —

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, I've already responded.

Go ahead.

Q. Scott, was it — who in the investigation made this request of the White House not to comment further about the investigation? Was it Mr. Fitzgerald? Did he make the request of you —

MR. McCLELLAN: I mean, you can ask — you can direct those questions to the special prosecutors. I think probably more than one individual who's involved in overseeing the investigation had expressed a preference that we not get into commenting on the investigation while it's ongoing. I think we all want to see the prosecutors get to the bottom of this matter. The President wants to see the prosecutors get to the bottom of this matter. And the way to help them do that is to not get into commenting on it while it is ongoing.

Q. Was the request made of you, or of whom in the White House?

MR. McCLELLAN: I already responded to these questions.

Go ahead.

Q. According to the Gallup Poll, 62 percent of the American people believe that a terrorist attack like the one we saw in London could happen here. In the President's speech today, we haven't heard anything new. What his plan exactly to protect the American people?

MR. McCLELLAN: It's exactly what he outlined in his remarks earlier today. It's a comprehensive strategy. We are working on multiple fronts to protect the American people. As he said, the best way to defend the American people is to stay on the offense and take the fight to the enemy. That's exactly what we are doing.

You see, the terrorists have been carrying out attacks for years. They felt that the civilized world would only respond in a very limited way. We saw the attacks back in '83 on the Marine barracks in Lebanon. We saw the attacks on — or the attack on the World Trade Center back in 1993. We saw the attacks on our embassies back in '98. They've certainly carried out attacks in other parts of the civilized world, as well.

The President saw the attacks of September 11th and said we are going to take the fight to the enemy. We are going to wage a comprehensive war, and we are going to see it through. The enemy will be defeated. And the way we will ultimately defeat the enemy is to defeat their hateful ideology. And you do that by spreading freedom because free societies are peaceful societies, as the President said.

Bob, go ahead.

Q. Yes, in your dealings with the special counsel, have you consulted a personal attorney?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, I'm just not going to say anything further. I expressed all I'm going to say on this matter from this podium.

Go ahead.

Q. How does the uncertainty over Chief Justice Rehnquist affect the President's selection of a replacement for Justice O'Connor?

MR. McCLELLAN: How does the speculation about another vacancy?

Q. How does the uncertainty about Chief Justice Rehnquist affect the process?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, the President is moving forward to fill the vacancy. He spent time on his trip looking over the background materials of potential nominees and some of their key rulings or decisions. The President has been talking with senior staff — I know he visited with Andy Card about it on the trip, as well — and talking to them about potential nominees and the process for moving forward to name a nominee.

We are prepared for additional vacancies, if they should occur. This is something that we have prepared for, for quite some time at the White House. But I'm not aware of any announcement that's been made on an additional vacancy at this point.

Q. Scott, voting rights reauthorization. I understand the President is for voting rights reauthorization, but he still wants to study portions of it. It sounds kind of contradictory. Could you explain what that means, as it's up for renewal?

MR. McCLELLAN: Sure. As you point out, it's up of reauthorization in 2006. The President does support reauthorization. That process is getting underway in Congress. And as it works its way through Congress, the White House will look at and consider any improvements to strengthen it. And that's — that's really where it stands at this point.

Q. Well, what does he think could strengthen it? What tweaks is he thinking of right now —

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think that's something we'll look at. There are suggestions that I'm sure people are going to make as we move forward, and we'll look at and consider those suggestions. The President also met with the Congressional Black Caucus and said he would take their views into account as we move forward, as well.

MORE ON THE PLAME AFFAIR: IS FLEISCHER HIDING BEHIND ROVE?, by Charles Carreon

4:56 pm, July 27, 2005

You know, “some people say” that shit-eating grin on Rove's face has been bugging them lately. They wonder if he's the pseudo-scapegoat, as in, the guy with the bulletproof hide who can take the hits that Fleischer couldn't.

Ari Fleischer quit his job the day Richard Novak outed Valerie Plame, and went off to hide in the woods, according to today's NYT:

New York Times, July 27, 2005

From the road, it is barely possible to see the home where Ari Fleischer lives. Tucked away behind a secured fence and a thicket of shrubbery (never say ”bushes“), Mr. Fleischer, the former White House press secretary, is right where he wants to be these days: nearly invisible.

Ari Fleischer was in the airplane when Sec. of State William Powell was walking around with a classified memo that undermined the Nigerian yellowcake lie that his boss was about broadcast to all humanity during the ”State of the Union Address.“ Rove supposedly learned about Valerie's identity as a CIA agent during that flight, when he saw the memo. However, according to undisclosed sources willing to breach Grand Jury secrecy, Fleischer said he never saw the memo. Yeah, right! You can imagine Rove, Powell and Bush all agreeing solemnly, ”Don't tell Ari about the CIA agent whose husband is giving us a screwing on the Niger yellowcakestory!“ Fleischer would be like, ”Okay, guys, what's in the memo?"

But how about this for a ridiculous spin:

NYT:

Mr. Fleischer, as White House spokesman, delivered the White House pronouncements about the Iraq war in the weeks after the invasion began in March 203. But he was never part of Mr. Bush's inner circle, and he was not the only member of the Bush communications team involved in trying to counter Mr. Wilson's critique of prewar intelligence.

Well if Ari wasn't part of the Bush inner circle, then there's only one person in that inner circle — Karl Rove. So by deflecting blame from Fleischer, the NYT is helping refocus on Rove, who is free to hide his head in the sand, since he has a bulletproof ass.

And while Ari mayn't have been ”the only member ... trying to counter“ Wilson's outing of the President for using a knowingly false Niger yellowcake story, he was certainly one of the very top members of that ”communications team.“

Apparently, Ari's book, ”Taking Heat: The President, The Press, and My Years in The White House," wraps up with a description of the first storm warnings that blew up around the Plame Affair:

Ari Fleischer's book wrote:

A controversy raged over the accuracy of a claim the president had made in his State of the Union Address concerning Iraq's efforts to obtain uranium from Africa [and so] for more than 45 minutes, the press and I enjoyed our last clash.

Well, Ari may wish that were true, but I'm afraid he might have a few more questions to answer.

Y'all remember Katherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State that stopped the hand recounts in Palm Beach and other contested precincts that had been undertaken in order to count a host of Democratic votes that had turned up missing, uncounted, and miscounted. The same Katherine Harris who had removed 57,700 names from Florida's voter rolls on the grounds they were felons, even though many of the people deprived of the right to vote hadn't committed any crime at all. The same Katherine Harris who paid Choicepoint subsidiary DBT $2.3 million to “scrub” the voter database after firing the company that was doing the job the year before for a mere $5,700. Uh, yes, the same Choicepoint that lost the 4,000,000 names and related personal information earlier this year.

Greg Palast wrote about Harris' blatantly unfair voter de-registration policies, that affected not only the presidential vote, but also Jeb Bush's re-election race against Democratic challenger Bill McBride.

Greg Palast writing for Slate.com

Florida is the only state paying a private company that promises to ”cleanse" voter rolls. The state signed a $4 million contract with DBT in 1998 (since 1999 a division of ChoicePoint of Atlanta) to create the scrub list, called the central voter file, which was mandated by a 1998 state voter-fraud law. *** Florida paid DBT $4.3 million over three years to help identify felons illegally registered to vote, replacing a company that had charged the state only $5,700 per year for this work ... because the giant database operator, which aids the FBI on manhunts, offered to verify the accuracy of the list using several of its 1,200 databases [and] by telephone calls . . . . But, with the state's permission, DBT skipped those costly cross-checks. Last February, when asked to explain why DBT was paid for verification work not done, Florida Elections Division chief Clayton Roberts ended an agreed-upon interview with this reporter, locked himself in his office, and called in state troopers to remove this reporter from the Florida capitol building in Tallahassee.

Harris sure knows how to pick her Elections Division Chief, and while Clayton Roberts may be no blood relation of John G. Roberts, I am sure they are well-acquainted based on Judge Roberts' intense labor revising briefs for the Bush campaign during the legal battles that were necessary to allow Ms. Harris' to keep her heavy hand on the throats of thousands of Florida voters, invalidating their votes for the presidential election. Jeb Bush's office tried to downplay Judge Roberts' unstinting labors to further the Bush dynastic impetus during the heady days of legal jousting that saw David Boies first win with the Florida Supreme Court to keep the recount going, and then lose before a Supreme Court opinion that has been widely denounced. As relayed by the AP, Jeb Bush's office threw cold water on the story:

Bush spokesman Jacob DiPietre

”He came down and met with the governor briefly and shared with him some of his thoughts on what he believed the governor's responsibilities were after a presidential election, a presidential election in dispute. There were several experts, including professors, scholars, constitutional experts who came down to Florida at that time and Judge Roberts was one of them.“

But a Miami Herald interview with Ted Cruz, currently Texas Solicitor General, reveals the nominee had a lead role, along with other former clerks of Justice William Rehnquist, in revising the crucial briefs and preparing George W. Bush's lawyer Ted Olson for his oral argument in front of Rehnquist. Getting Roberts on the job, according to Cruz, was a no-brainer.

Remembering those heady, sleep-deprived days, when four-hundred Florida Republican lawyers, led by teams of ”litigation lions“ and ”800 pound gorillas,“ threw themselves at the task of frustrating the Democrats' efforts to ”in effect, steal the elections,“ Cruz almost choked up with admiration for Roberts. From Cruz's viewpoint, Roberts was a hero, a selfless lawyer who ”already had a name [and] didn't need the recognition,“ but along with everyone else, he just ”grabbed a bucket" to put out the fire.

Yeah, and a hell of a dangerous fire that was — all those people counting ballots that had been carefully hidden, miscounted, misplaced. Flames were busting out all over. A conflagration of fair voting was about to engulf the process. Good thing they put that out. And everybody loves a fireman.

Machiavelli said that winning makes everything all right. But sometimes it depends what you win. Back in 1996, Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts, Jr. probably didn't foresee the tsunami of antigay sentiment that would be cresting nine years later, during his nomination. That’s why, in his sixty-plus page response to the Senate’s questionnaire, he didn’t mention his signal victory before the US Supreme Court in Romer v. Evans, that overturned the majority will of the people of Colorado, who by a vote of 53.4 percent, had enacted “Amendment 2:”

Neither the state of Colorado, through any of its branches or departments, nor any of its agencies, political subdivisions, municipalities or school districts, shall enact, adopt or enforce any statute, regulation, ordinance or policy whereby homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships shall constitute or otherwise be the basis of, or entitle any person or class of persons to have or claim any minority status, quota preferences, protected status or claim of discrimination.

After the trial judge upheld the will of the anti-gay Coloradans, the activist Colorado Supreme Court sent the case back to the trial court July 19, 1993, ordering the trial judge to subject the citizen-enacted law to “strict scrutiny,” and rule it unconstitutional unless it advanced a “compelling state interest.” This is judicial code for “Kill this monster,” because according to Ken Karst of UCLA Law, my Con Law professor, no statute ever survives strict scrutiny. Of course, Ken is rarely wrong about such things, and was right in this case. The trial court ruled the bigoted law unconstitutional on December 14, 1993. Colorado took it back to the Colorado Supreme Court, predictably lost, and appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

About this time, you would expect John G. Roberts, Jr. to be winging into the Denver airport on a mission from G-d, to put the Philistines to flight like the legal Samson he is, to send those sodomites packing with their twisted carnal lusts. And he was flying into Denver, but for all the wrong reasons. Jimmy Carter may have lusted in his heart, but Roberts manifested sympathy for people who want to love with all he wrong parts of their bodies.

Yes, John G. Roberts, Jr. spearheaded the gay drive into the vitals of the nation’s jurisprudence, upending the law, and debauching it to accommodate the unnatural desires of those who cannot understand that sex and marriage were meant by G-d to be a purely heterosexual phenomenon. Penises go into vaginas, and into nothing else. Vaginas are to be penetrated only be penises. Get it straight! Roberts did not, and most unfortunately, pitched the Supreme Court to the left, getting a clear 6-3 majority that marginalized his future buddies, Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice Scalia, and Justice Thomas, who squeaked out a 3-man dissent. Whoa! Talk about being on the wrong side of the issue!

Limbaugh, the dopehead, is on a rant about this, and you can basically start working on a crucifix for Roberts. This hired gun is in a world of hurt, and claiming to be a hired gun isn’t going to get him out of it. According to the New York Times, this Romer case is a double black mark against Roberts. First, he was doing pro bono, which is totally gross, and worse, he was lavishing this disgusting free work on people who have sex in ways that Rush only fantasizes about.

But the Democrats will probably screw it up by going on the attack now, instead of letting the Publicans burn their own man alive. Every hear about the inventor of The Brass Bull? It was a torture device in which the victim was imprisoned in the “belly” of the brass bull, and then roasted slowly so their agonized cries issued from the bowels of the bull for hours. Legend says that the creator of the horrific device, who had thought to please a cruel king with his invention, instead invoked the king’s most perverse impulse, who directed that the inventor be the first to taste the fruits of his genius, and promptly roasted him, commenting on how well the device worked.

Through his pro bono work in Florida, John G. Roberts, Jr. saddled the nation with the president he thought we should have. And due to his misplaced sympathies for the sexual underclass, he will now be denied admission to the highest seat of power. Ironic, or merely just? Let’s wait and see.

GROKSTER: THE ASTEROID THAT KILLED THE MEDIA DINOSAURS, by Charles Carreon

6:36 pm, August 7, 2005

On June 27, 2005, the Supreme Court decided MGM v. Grokster. From the sounds in the press, you'd think Hollywood won. But before we get into that, let's address a fundamental question: What does “Grok” mean? Although it sounds like something a psychedelic toad might say, it's actually a verb invented by Robert Heinlein, to describe an enhanced way of knowing other people, in his hilarious scifi spoof of hippies and psychics, “Stranger In A Strange Land.” The novel hasn’t been popular since the seventies, though, and this literary allusion has probably had little significance for most Grokster users, who just want to get free music. In that regard, Grokster was very helpful. As Justice Souter wrote in Grokster: “The record is replete with evidence that from the moment Grokster and StreamCast began to distribute their free software, each one clearly voiced the objective that recipients use it to download copyrighted works, and each took active steps to encourage infringement.”

That was bad, as you might have guessed. Because thievery is bad, and giving people tools to steal, while suggesting they can’t be caught, is inducing people to steal, which is bad enough to make honest people stay out of the business. And by and large, I think honest people stayed out of the business of providing tools specifically marketed to the infringing public.

Grokster marked no change in the law, however, and for Hollywood's long term interests, that was a disappointment. The Ninth Circuit has merely been directed to impose liability for copyright infringement where the manufacturer clearly identifies infringement as the raison d' etre of the product. That was the case with Napster, and it has to be the case with Grokster, Morpheus, and Kazaa, the other defendants in the case. Advocating thievery by means of your device is unlawful, and it doesn't matter that you don't sell the software, particularly where the software is purveyed via a “free software” scheme that plants spyware and advertising on your desk or laptop computer. That was of course the case with Kazaa, which brought millions of desktop machines to a standstill, able only to stream banners, popups, and other garbage.

Justice Souter’s opinion described the Ninth Circuit’s holding as follows:

Justice Souter in MGM v. Grokster

The Ninth Circuit [concluded that] distribution of a commercial product capable of substantial noninfringing uses could not give rise to contributory liability for infringement unless the distributor had actual knowledge of specific instances of infringement and failed to act on that knowledge. The fact that the software was capable of substantial noninfringing uses in the Ninth Circuit's view meant that Grokster and StreamCast were not liable, because they had no such actual knowledge, owing to the decentralized architecture of their software. The court also held that Grokster and StreamCast did not materially contribute to their users' infringement because it was the users themselves who searched for, retrieved, and stored the infringing files, with no involvement by the defendants beyond providing the software in the first place.

What is this about “substantial noninfringing uses?” Since when did anyone load Grokster, Streatmcast, Morpheus, Kazaa or any other “FastTrack-based” P2P system on their machine so they could engage in a noninfringing use? Napster and the Grokster defendants were all disseminating software that induced people to steal. The trial judge killed Napster because Shawn Fanning had clearly announced at the start of the venture his intention to encourage piracy. Napster had substantial non-infringing uses, in a theoretical sense, but that didn’t save it from being sued out of existence, so what was the difference between Fanning’s piratical venture and the software at issue in Grokster? Napster stored the infringing content on its own severs, whereas the FastTrack based P2P software allowed each desktop user to treat the whole Internet as a hard drive, thus eliminating the need for the server. The Supreme Court saw this as a distinction without a difference – the point wasn’t how the software worked, but how it was marketed. Marketing discloses the intention, wrongful or otherwise, of the software distributor. In order to avoid infringement suits, anyone who sells software utilities that copy content as part of their use and value should never announce, as an incentive, that their product can be used to commit theft.

Of course, some people like to popularize the “grey” character of their ware, but they are often swindlers with strange agendas. Steve Cohen trumpeted the piratical utility of his Earth Station 5 web-based P2P utility by declaring ES Five to be “at war with the RIAA.” Cohen supposedly housed the venture in Jenin, Palestine, and said he was never served with a lawsuit because no process servers would go there. Probably there was no one in Palestine — who would work there when they could just work in Israel and claim to work in Jenin using a mail drop? Steve's dodges are so predictable, but once you have the Washington Post repeating your cover story, like Cohen did back in February 2004, you're in good shape. The intrepid old swindler told me half of his purpose in running the site, which stole and re-streamed “The Naked News” from http://www.es-5.com, was to offend the owners of Wired Solutions, the creators of the Naked News. But when Ashcroft said he was going to go criminal on copyright infringers, Cohen decided to get out of the business, because he didn't want to be involved with anything criminal. He said he was not bothered by the civil arrest warrant he's been subject to since 2001 for failing to appear in San Jose US District Court as ordered by Judge James A. Ware in Kremen v. Cohen.

Altruistic as Cohen’s campaign to free content from its owners might have been, it wasn't lawful, and he was well aware of his vulnerability to civil lawsuits, which was one of his announced reasons for locating in Palestine, a non-nation in which even the rules on local service of process are unsettled. Still, that would be no comfort to him if Ashcroft put him on a wanted listed and faxed it to Interpol, because Steve now runs casinos worldwide and doesn’t need extra heat, so he surfed right out of the infringement business. Having been to Club Fed once, he claims to be disinterested in anything would spark a return visit, and realized that his “declaration of war” would seal his doom if Ashcroft wanted to start swearing out indictments and arrest warrants.

How could the Ninth Circuit could ever insulate these defendants from liability? How could you immunize companies that were started by crooks seeking to circumvent the effect of the Napster decision by “decentralizing” their business operations, that turned all their users into infringers and scofflaws, got some of them sued, and captured all the cash? Not to mention that they deliberately fed a huge, ultra-high-tech piracy network to make sure their uses had plenty of stolen files to “trade.” (Wired article.)

Kids and grannies get sued for using Kazaa, after being encouraged to use it for that purpose, but Kazaa is not infringing? Hold it a minute! You’re trying to treat them like the Publicans treat gun manufacturers – as not responsible for the injuries their products cause? And therein, my friend, lies the difference. Gun manufacturers carefully avoid marketing to criminals. They explicitly market to the hunting, home defense, and target-shooting consumers. They don’t have to market the utility of their products to murderers, armed robbers, rapists, terrorists, and rogue cops. Hollywood has done that work for free. And Hollywood was the plaintiff in Grokster, of course, which illuminates the most important legal principle here, as in every case: “Whose ox is gored?”

Whose ox indeed? To understand the depth of this legal principle, let us return to the “Betamax Case,” Universal v. Sony, 104 S. Ct. 774. Who had oxen in that goring contest? Sony, the maker of the Betamax video recorder, which could record TV shows off the air, was sued by Universal, the maker of movies that are licensed for showing on TV. Today, of course, Sony-Time-Life is the largest producer of entertainment in the world, and is currently recycling TV reruns on the big screen in “Bewitched.” Nowadays, Universal and Sony are on the same side of the issue, and Sony would never sell such a “disruptive” technology, and indeed, has introduced only unpopular digital music devices, primarily because of their insistence on using proprietary technology like the “mini-disc” and proprietary file systems for VAIO PCs. These are habits Sony picked up since it became a content mogul, so frankly, the Betamax case is a mistake that Sony will never make again.

But let’s hit rewind and go back to those crazy days in 1976, when the Betamax invaded American homes. This machine ushered in the video store and porn boom, let people watch Monday Night Football on six other nights of the week, and let them zap advertising, that obnoxious time-thief that dilutes the pure entertainment value of a show or movie. Why did Universal lose that case? Well first, what did Universal contend? They claimed that any machine that could clip broadcasts out of the air that were only licensed to be shown by the TV networks for one, very expensive time period, shouldn’t become permanently licensed to the viewers who happen to tape the show when it was showing, using the clever timer that allowed people to start recording even while they were away. Then they come home and watch it, zapping ads all the way. This, it was universally agreed all up and down Sunset Boulevard and south to Olympic Boulevard at least, could not be right.

But you know what? That Monday Night Football turned out to be mighty important. The NFL and other sporting entities said they weren’t Hollywood, they weren’t making movies, they were playing sports, and even professional sports were meant to be played once and enjoyed, studied, analyzed and treasured forever. Why not just confiscate all the photos of Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle hitting home runs? Why not indeed, Hollywood echoed, but their cries went unheeded, and all the professional sports teams and college leagues came out in favor of the value of the Betamax’s broadcast-taping capability. This was indeed a “substantial, non-infringing use” of some importance to the Supreme Court. Sports, and the interests of athletic associations, always seem to get extra-deferential treatment from the Supremes. Baseball, for example, enjoys a unique freedom from liability under the Antitrust laws for which there is no precedent other than that it is the national game, and presumably, must be rigged to protect the public. Take note, however, that professional sports did not weigh in on the side of the defendants in the Grokster case, and why should they? Sports videos were not widely shared on Kazaa any more than other public domain materials.

The second notable feature of the Betamax opinion is its conclusion that once content is broadcast over the airwaves even once, and made available for capture by this new technology, it enjoys diminished protection forever. If you can spring for a VCR, you can get your copy of Bambi virtually free, after you edit out all of the Tinkerbell visits and toy ads. Universal howled at this result like a banshee deprived of the opportunity to consume its firstborn. Record the whole damn thing! How could that be “fair use,” that previously had seemed to allow authors to quote brief portions of copyrighted works for scholarly or critical purposes? But the Supremes basically said – hey, you put it out there, now they got it, and they have the right to have it. People were surprised at this ruling, but for the first time it put teeth in a provision of the Federal Copyright Statutes that had really been ignored – 17 U.S.C. Section 107. In Section 107, Congress made it very clear that copyright protection is limited by the public’s pre-existing right of fair use of the author’s works, thus recognizing the importance of the audience in the creative dialogue. In other words, the author can obtain copyright protection, but it is “subject to” the right of the public to read, discuss, study, copy, criticize, and otherwise expose the work to criticism and appreciation. Of course, otherwise, copyright law would at minimum silence free speech. This has been successfully accomplished of course, by major news entities, that have been allowed to copyright the President’s Speeches, thus locking them out of the public domain. No one has yet challenged that, but the challenge, once made, will be successful. The President is no one’s actor, at least not according to the Constitution and Section 107.

Who is reading Grokster very carefully? All purveyors of free software that in any way utilize the copying of copyrightable content as part of its package of product benefits. Google, for example, is a free software scheme that has already scared the bejeezus out of the world’s advertising agencies and content monopolists. Witness the hue and cry over Google’s threat to put all the world's books online. That fact is, if we don't start putting libraries online, reading books will become about as popular as polo in Greenland.

Since all that Grokster really said is that you can’t advertise burglar tools as burglar tools – you have to call them omnidrectional screwdrivers. Anyone who thinks that inviting people to use your software to commit theft is a good idea is not a business partner, he or she is an RIAA private investigator looking to set you up! So keep on cranking out that P2P software, and emphasize not the pleasures of theft, but the joys of sharing public domain materials, engaging in fair use such as study, discussion, and criticism. After all, how can you study music but by listening to it? Do music teachers have to license their lessons? Suppose Kurt Cobain had been required to pay to listen to the radio? C’mon – the listener becomes the creator by listening, by studying. Media has value only when it’s consumed.

The future of media distribution is not in monopolization of creative production by either the imposition of artificial limits on distribution (the Clipper Chip, the V-Chip, the Broadcast Flag, and other Cripple-ware). The days are over when the media monopolists could enforce their monopoly through production and distribution bottlenecks (CD pressing, transporting, and selling through retail outlets), while simultaneously engaging in price-fixing schemes such as the one that the RIAA settled with the FTC in 2004 for a $450 Million fine. The days of endless gravy are over. It’s time for the dinosaurs of LA to sell their Wilshire condos and move to Australia, Israel, Florida, or Arizona. Their work is done, their sun has set. Ovitz is a washed up joke. Eisner hung around too long. Lucas has at last completed the longest shaggy dog story in history, and Steve Jobs is a bigger media mogul than Barry Diller. We can only hope that their jaded, tired vision of our world will depart with them.

The parking lot was full at City Hall on Tuesday night. For weeks Ashland had been bubbling with the news that the City Attorney had ruled that the Rogue Valley Roasting Company, an East Main Ashland landmark with a broad clientele, was operating without required City permits. Coming hot on the heels of the Chief Bianca dust-up, the flap over The Roasting Company seemed ill-timed, publicity-wise. The fact that the anti-coffee-house action had been instigated at the direct request of City Councilwoman Cate Hartzell, whose home lies across from the popular shop, seemed to have especially raised hackles. Adding to this the fact that The Roasting Company had strong local support, the heavy turnout was not unexpected.

In what struck many of the waiting citizens as a ploy to delay their involvement, two other matters consumed the first two hours of the Commission meeting. It was around nine o’clock and still standing room only in the Ashland City Council Chamber when the Planning Commission took up Planning Action 2005-01313, “An Appeal to the Planning Commission of a Staff Advisor determination that the current use of the subject property at 917 E. Main Street as a coffee shop is an illegal, non-conforming use in violation of Ashland Municipal Code 18.68.090.” Appellant Jerry Quast, the proprietor of The Roasting Company, was represented by Alan Harper, seeking to overturn the verdict of illegality that Asst. City Attorney Mike Reeder had imposed on the Ashland landmark.

Jerry and Deborah Quast’s business life hung in the balance. The bad news had arrived in a letter dated April 5, 2005, signed by John McLaughlin, Ashland’s Director of Community Development. McLaughlin’s letter told Jerry and Deborah that “the City of Ashland … has determined that … your occupancy of the site as a coffee shop is considered illegal [therefore you] are required to apply for a Conditional Use Permit [and] failure to apply for a permit will result in the City being required to take enforcement action.”

What had brought this meteorite crashing down upon their heads, the Quasts asked themselves? The answers would come in good time. On March 17, 2005, Cate Hartzell had sent a letter to City Manager Gino Grimaldi that accused The Roasting Company of a serious offense: “The Rogue Valley Roasting Company has become successful; unfortunately, the neighbors pay the cost and the City stepped away from its role.” Success often leads to a fall, but for The Roasting Company, it seemed too ironic. The booming trade at the coffeehouse, that seems to funnel hundreds of people of every age and description through on a good day, is a symbol of the city’s vitality. Equally important, and perhaps equally offensive to its detractors, over the years The Roasting Company became a public forum where people could meet away from the homogenized coffee ambiance that saturates the town. The Roasting Company, its scores of supporters made clear, provides a welcome antidote to the corporate blandness that has invaded Ashland insidiously over the last thirty years. For Councilwoman Hartzell to attack The Roasting Company seemed surprisingly insensitive, a bureaucratic faux pas that attracted notice from supporters and opponents alike.

Passing beyond the touchy-feely realm, the sudden appearance of a real threat to the existence of The Roasting Company touched a nerve of self-protectiveness in the Ashland core. Heavens, thought many, where will I get coffee and a bagel? Plus, many old timers have bought food and drinks at that location for four decades, and the very idea that the place could be shut down for a zoning violation seemed ludicrous. For their part, the Quasts have always been squeaky clean. After they bought the property in 1994, City planning employee Bill Molnar told them they didn’t need a Conditional Use Permit to operate a coffee shop because of its historic uses. In other words, the property was “grandfathered” as a grocery store deli/coffeeshop. When the Quasts made indoor improvements and added a deck to the coffeehouse in July, 1998, City planning employees Mark Knox signed off on building and zoning permits with full knowledge of current use as a coffeehouse. Internal City memoranda acknowledged that the Quast’s property had been grandfathered for the coffeehouse use. What could be more secure?

But trouble sneaks up when you rarely expect it, and it turned out that having a City Councilperson across the street from the business was not a good thing. And having obliging lawyers in the City Attorney’s office who work at the behest of the City Council ready to field complaints for City insiders may be the type of problem that just plain folks have a nose for. Assistant City Attorney Mike Reeder told the Commissioners that after investigating Councilwoman Hartzell’s complaints, he had found no grounds for taking action against The Roasting Company’s operation, but that after a searching review of the file, he had discovered that City planners had made errors that had to be corrected by having The Roasting Company’s owners file for a Conditional Use Permit. Reeder explained that “the rule of law” demanded that The Roasting Company’s operation be brought into compliance, or face enforcement proceedings. Without apologies, he urged the Commission to uphold his finding that a “change in use” which occurred during a rather vague time period in the nineties, rendered the presence of the coffeehouse illegal. Reeder counseled the Commissioners to disregard any arguments about the untimeliness of the City’s negative land use action, because the landowner “has the burden” of remaining in compliance with local laws, regardless of whatever reassurances they might receive from City officers. Thus, without saying it, Reeder seemed to be articulating a new rule – the citizen must pay when the City discovers its own “errors” years after the fact. Alan Harper argued that the delay was all-important and barred any action by the City against the existing grandfathered use, because the 1998 permit signoff by Mark Knox was a “final land use action” to which objections had to be filed within a very short time frame, and they were now nearly seven years too late. Reeder’s five-page, single-spaced decision convicted The Roasting Company of illegal operation only after awkwardly attempting to explain away the problem of untimeliness, but the verbose legal essay came off as a sophomoric piece of pettifoggery, if the three retired attorneys who testified at the hearing were any sort of jury. Certainly the crowd were having none of Reeder’s lawyerly fancy steps, as he learned when he harvested catcalls from the crowd after inadvertently disclosing his view that the opinions of citizens were “not relevant.” But still, on any ordinary night, the paper-pushers would have won. But this was a different night. The crowd did not disperse, and one sensed they would not leave quietly without being given their due.

Chair John Fields managed the proceedings sensitively, and the Commissioners, after initially seeming somewhat alarmed at the extraordinarily large turnout, gamely extended the time for the hearing until 11 o’clock. The citizen speakers were notably concise, clocking in, on average, at no more than 40 seconds beyond the 3-minute limit. Several speakers commented on the tardiness of the City’s action, and the fact that the City’s ruling of illegality was based on the City’s admission that it had erred twice in permitting the coffeehouse to operate without requiring a Conditional Use Permit. It did appear, as John Gaffey observed, that the City Attorney’s office had made a mess and dumped it in the Planning Commission’s lap. Several speakers echoed this opinion, noting that the City should not penalize a landowner for “errors” that had been “found” by Asst. City Attorney Reeder after looking for some grounds to satisfy Councilwoman Hartzell’s demand for “City involvement” in her neighborhood relations. Several citizens complained that the proceedings were “a travesty,” speculating that real estate interests might be attempting to oust a successful business in order to convert the location to multi-unit housing, and one The Roasting Company supporter bluntly stated that “Something stinks. Something stinks and everyone here in this room can smell it.” No one disagreed with him, and I for one did not smell coffee.

After the testimony of the citizens, Cate Hartzell, who entered and left the Chamber as if on cue, gave her testimony in the sincere voice we have come to recognize as her hallmark. However, she spoke so softly that it almost seemed as if she wished to speak privately with the Commissioners, and displayed only one photograph to the Commission that she said was representative of many more that she had back at her home. One wag in the audience wondered whether this was an invitation for all of the citizens, or just the Commissioners, to stop by and flip through her album of The Roasting Company surveillance photos.

After the testimony of the complaining Councilor, the issue was brought to a vote on the motion of Commissioner Ken Kairn, after the motion of Commissioner John Stromberg to allow time for discussion failed for lack of a second. The vote was 7-to-2 in favor of overturning the City’s finding of illegality. One opposing vote was cast by Olena Black, who sought to stretch the Commission’s jurisdiction to encompass considerations of whether The Roasting Company’s provision of free wireless Internet had “changed the use” of the coffeeshop. The second dissenting vote was from John Stromberg, whose motion for further discussion and delay received no second.

The Quasts had been cut down from the gallows, and none too soon. Afterward, Jerry Quast clearly seemed emotionally drained, and when I asked him for a comment, he almost seemed not to be believing how things had gone as he simply repeated, “We never thought we had done anything wrong.” Indeed, he had not, and as one former City employee said in his testimony, the event was an embarrassment to the City, for which the Quasts should receive an apology and compensation for their legal fees. With land use lawyers running about $300/hour, the Quasts are going to have to sell a lot of coffee to get back to where they were before their powerful neighbor, with the help of a lot of free legal work from the City Attorney’s office, declared war on their business. But that’s politics, and when you are fighting City Hall, sometimes just surviving to fight another day is a big win.

For the community, the win could not be clearer. The Planning Commission has been informed that they are not be used as an ad hoc grievance council for liveability issues, and that “success” is not a reason to close a local business, regardless of who lives across the street from it.

On the last Friday in July, APD Chief Mike Bianca’s supporters not only rallied in support of their Chief, they leveled harsh criticism at the secretive group of APD “sworn and unsworn officers” who have targeted Bianca for removal. Oregon law doesn’t recognize the authority of an “unsworn peace officer,” but that is how some members are described. This paper has been unable to obtain additional information on which of the dissidents are actually APD employees, and which are “hobby cops,” because the dissidents hold secret meetings and refuse to disclose their names, claiming fear of retaliation.

Passing the $35,000 Buck

Despite their cloaked identities, the anonymous complainers have been granted credibility by City officials, who have agreed that the cost of passing this buck is going to be $35,000 – the amount of money allocated to hire “outside consultants” to help Chief Bianca communicate with the secretive sworn and unsworn officers. Among other resolutions reached by the crowd at the most recent rally was to present a request to the City Council to not spend that money, and instead simply lend their support to the Chief by affirming his authority over the dissidents.

A Bizarre Complaint Reveals An Alien Psychology

In the eyes of Bianca’s supporters, the complaints of the dissidents became absurd when they claimed that the Chief’s skillful resolution of a confrontation with a knife-wielding youth without resort to homicide was actually a tactical error that would put future officers in danger. Why? Because, as Officer Teresa Selby stated, the suspect should have been “drilled,” failing to note that “drilling” tends to be lethal, and the person that Chief Bianca saved from drilling was a very intelligent local man whose parents are longtime SOU faculty members. This tunnel-visioned focus on “officer safety” to the exclusion of all other concerns was commented upon by many of the speakers, who noted that aside from the Chief and one Sergeant, none of the APD officers are Ashland residents. As more speakers were heard, especially the young people who apparently get the brunt of the APD’s acting out, it became apparent that many of them felt that APD cops view Ashlanders as aliens because they do not share their generally liberal political and cultural views.

Cut From Different Wood

Unlike the secret critics who have drawn a bead on Chief Bianca, he is a longtime Ashland resident who worked his way into the job through security in Lithia Park. Once at Garfield Park, the stories about the Chief began flowing from the microphone, making it clear that this cop is cut from a different type of wood than your average Taser-toter. Bianca is gifted with empathy, not usually a characteristic prized by patrol officers, and respects the emotions of bereavement, fear and loss that arise in connection with the traumatic events that life inevitably deals us, and that peace officers are supposed to help us deal with. Unlike many cops, Bianca clearly doesn’t crave “action” any more than citizens want trouble with the police. According to Bianca’s supporters, he’s the right cop for the job, and they actually fear that without his influence, the cops in this town could get rougher, more arbitrary, and even start doing a little drilling.

Lightweight Gear, Plenty of Speakers

Approximately thirty-seven people spoke at the rally once the marchers arrived at Garfield Park, where the Instant Runoff Voting supporters had already set up a table in the shade. The two groups joined forces and agendas, and fired up some amplification when one of the rally organizers, former Deputy DA Charles Carreon, arrived in a bright red, jury-rigged sound truck, flying a hybrid US/Peace flag, plastered with pictures of Bianca. During the march, Carreon’s wife Tara piloted the outlandish vehicle up and down the main streets, while Carreon serenaded and peptalked marchers, citizens and anyone who would listen to his impromptu political verses. Some folks look great with a microphone in hand, and all of these people had one thing in mind – getting the City’s leaders off the fence and squarely in Chief Bianca’s corner. Looking at their faces reminded some folks of 1968.

“Not The Fringe”

NPR Radio host Jeff Golden concluded the rally by responding to one speaker’s fear that those present were not important enough to influence the debate: “We are not the fringe, but a true cross-section of Ashland, and all of America.” And he should know.

FOX-DRUDGE ON SHEEHAN: WHAT SHIT WILL FOOLS NOT EAT?, by Charles Carreon

12:37 am, August 11, 2005

I will tell you candidly the last time I watched FOX channel was in 1998, during the Clinton impeachment hearings, at a Best Western in Salem, Oregon, but I still know it's just a gigantic shit IV plugged into the nation's main brain vein. And I've never read a word of Matt Drudge, but I know he's a shitbag. It kind of falls into the same category as never having visited Colombia, but still knowing it's a drug and murder capital awash in US dollars and exported iniquity. Some things you just know.

A really good poet, e.e. cummings, wrote in a wonderful poem, I Sing of Olaf Glad and Big, about how some military bastards tortured a fine man named Olaf because he had heart and told them “NO,” creatively saying, “There is some shit I will not eat.”

Do Americans, anywhere, know how to shape these words with their mouths? Can they refuse to accept the lies of people who will stoop to twisting the words of a grieving mother who gave her own child to support the vanity and greed of munitions dealers and oil mongers? This man, Drudge, if he be a man, is such a burden on the planet, it groans under the weight of him. I would never declare netwar on anyone, not like the right-to-lifers did against doctors who terminated pregnancies, but couldn't somebody just order a million pizzas and have them delivered to him? Or put his house up for sale without telling him? Or seduce him into a compromising situation and post his indiscretions for all the world to see?

Right, we all do this wish-fullfilment, because deep inside we know that people like Drudge, Murdoch, the Unnameables, all the dreadful world-wrecking shitbags, are sitting on top of the world, unshakeable, because built on the ground so stable it never shakes — the abyss of human stupidity. The answer to my question is — there is no shit fools will not eat. I have seen them eat this slander of the Sheehan woman. There is no shit they will not eat.

Cindy Sheehan ”changed her story on Bush“? Tracking a lie through the conservative media

Cindy Sheehan, mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, has drawn significant media attention for staging an anti-war protest outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, where she is demanding to meet with the president. On August 8, Internet gossip Matt Drudge posted an item on his website, the Drudge Report, in which he falsely claimed that Sheehan ”dramatically changed her account“ of a meeting she had with Bush in June 2004; Drudge attempted to back up his false assertion by reproducing Sheehan quotes from a 2004 newspaper article without providing their context. After the story appeared on the Drudge Report, it gained momentum among conservative weblogs and eventually reached Fox News, where it was presented as hard news and in commentaries. Media Matters for America will examine how one false story on an Internet gossip site ended up the focus of prime-time cable news coverage.

Drudge's August 8 item claiming that Sheehan had changed her story used quotes from a June 24, 2004, article in The Reporter of Vacaville, California, where Sheehan lives. The Reporter article described a meeting that Sheehan and 16 other families of soldiers killed in Iraq had with Bush in Fort Lewis, Washington, earlier that month. Sheehan's son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, was killed in Iraq in April 2004.

Drudge quoted Sheehan seemingly speaking glowingly of Bush: ”'I now know [Bush is] sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis,' Cindy said after their meeting. 'I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith,' “ and, ”For the first time in 11 weeks, they felt whole again. 'That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together,' Cindy said.“ Drudge contrasted these quotes to Sheehan's statements on the August 7 edition of CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, in which she said, of the 2004 meeting with Bush: ”We wanted to use the time for him to know that he killed an indispensable part of our family and humanity.“

Drudge, however, took Sheehan's quotes from The Reporter out of context in falsely claiming a shift in her position. The June 24, 2004, Reporter article also quoted Sheehan expressing her misgivings about Bush and the Iraq war:

”We haven't been happy with the way the war has been handled,“ Cindy said. ”The president has changed his reasons for being over there every time a reason is proven false or an objective reached.“

The 10 minutes of face time with the president could have given the family a chance to vent their frustrations or ask Bush some of the difficult questions they have been asking themselves, such as whether Casey's sacrifice would make the world a safer place.

But in the end, the family decided against such talk, deferring to how they believed Casey would have wanted them to act. In addition, Pat noted that Bush wasn't stumping for votes or trying to gain a political edge for the upcoming election.

Moreover, Sheehan was not referring to her meeting with Bush as ”the gift the president gave us.“ She was actually referring to the trip to Seattle, as Reporter staff writer Tom Hall noted in an August 9 article responding to Drudge: ”Sheehan also said the trip to Seattle helped connect her family to others that had lost a son or daughter in Iraq. Sheehan said sharing their story with those families was rewarding, as was the time she got to spend with her own family. 'That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together,' she said in the story. Drudge included that quote in his Monday morning report, but didn't explain that it referred to sharing time with her family, not the president.“

Reporter editor Diane Barney also responded to Drudge in an August 9 column, in which she said that Sheehan's positions on Bush and the war have not changed since June 2004. ”We don't think there has been a dramatic turnaround. Clearly, Cindy Sheehan's outrage was festering even then,“ Barney wrote. ”In ensuing months, she has grown more focused, more determined, more aggressive. ... We invite readers to revisit the story — in context — on our Web site and decide for themselves.“ An August 8 Editor & Publisher article quoted Barney further clarifying the paper's position: ”It's important that readers see the full context of the story, instead of just selected portions. We stand by the story as an accurate reflection of the Sheehan's take on the meeting at the time it was published.“

Throughout the day on August 8, Drudge's false story needed little time to spread to conservative weblogs:

Drudge posted the Sheehan item on August 8 at 10:11 am ET. Right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin posted the item on her weblog one hour later, at 11:22 am ET. At 12:40 pm ET, the Drudge story appeared on C-Log, the weblog of the conservative news and commentary website Townhall.com. At 2:33 pm ET, MooreWatch.com posted the story. At 3:23 pm ET, William Quick of DailyPundit.com posted the story. Fox News then picked up Drudge's distortion of Sheehan's quote. On the ”Political Grapevine“ segment of the August 8 edition of Special Report with Brit Hume, guest anchor and Fox News chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle highlighted Sheehan's supposed contradiction:

ANGLE: Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq last year, who's now camped outside President Bush's Crawford ranch demanding to see him, said yesterday on CNN that a private meeting with President Bush last year was offensive, insisting, quote, ”He acted like it was a party. He came in very jovial, like we should be happy with that. Our son died for the president's misguided policies.“

But just after that 2004 meeting, she gave a very different account, telling her local paper, the Vacaville Reporter, quote, ”I now know the president is sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis. I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith.“ She added that President Bush, quote, ”gave us the gift of happiness of being together.“

By August 9, various journalists and progressive bloggers revealed Drudge's distortion. On Salon.com, journalist Eric Boehlert noted on August 9: ”Put in full context, Drudge's claim of a flip-flop is easily dismissed.“ RawStory.com, a progressive news website, noted that Drudge ”grossly took Sheehan out of context.“

Nevertheless, Drudge's distortion again popped up on Fox News — this time on the August 9 edition of The O'Reilly Factor. Host Bill O'Reilly made Sheehan's nonexistent contradictions the focus of his ”Talking Points Memo“ segment:

O'REILLY: The fascinating saga of Cindy Sheehan. That is the subject of this evening's ”Talking Points Memo.“ Mrs. Sheehan is protesting in Crawford, Texas, trying to convince Americans the Iraq war is wrong and the president should be impeached. She is doing so because her son Casey, an Army specialist, was killed last year in Iraq. No one has the right to intrude on Mrs. Sheehan's grief. That's number one. She's entitled to her opinion on a situation that has deeply affected her. And she's angry at the White House.

[...]

Well, here's something very strange. Two months after her son died, Cindy and her husband Patrick did meet with President Bush, as she said. After that meeting, Cindy was quoted by a California newspaper as saying, ”I now know [President Bush] is sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis. I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss.“ So Mrs. Sheehan has apparently changed her mind about the president.

[...]

In an editorial today in The New York Times, it says, ”Mr. Bush obviously failed to comfort Ms. Sheehan when he met with her and her family. More important, he has not helped the nation give fallen soldiers like Casey Sheehan the honor they deserve.“ Well, let's go back to the California article. Cindy Sheehan was quoted as saying, ”That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together“ It sounds like comfort to me. What say you, New York Times?

O'Reilly then introduced his guest to comment on Sheehan — Michelle Malkin, who proclaimed that Sheehan's ”story hasn't checked out,“ to which O'Reilly readily agreed:

MALKIN: I mean, the New York Times editorial board is all too eager to prop her up as some sort of martyr and to buy her line when, clearly, her story hasn't checked out.

O'REILLY: Yes, her story hasn't [sic] changed.

MALKIN: And so I think — and I think that angle you're emphasizing is absolutely right here, which is the mainstream media just lapping this up and perpetuating myths and inaccuracies when they know it's not the truth.

O'REILLY: Yup. They don't identify — in the New York Times editorial today, it was obvious they did not say her story has been inconsistent. And they did not pinpoint that she is in bed with the radical left.

On the August 10 edition of his syndicated radio program, The Radio Factor, O'Reilly continued to assert that Sheehan had contradicted herself, stating, ”In her first meeting with the president, she was happy with him, and we read you the article that the Vacaville paper — where she's from in California — printed."

Cindy Sheehan Is Working To Bring Our Troops Home: ”Mr. President. You have daughters. How would you feel if one of them was killed?“

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

Casey Sheehan re-enlisted with the Army in August of 2003, knowing that his unit would eventually be deployed in Iraq. Casey, a Humvee mechanic with the 1st Calvary, was killed in Sadr City on April 4th of this year. He was only 24 years old. He is and forever will remain an American hero.

Casey’s mom, Cindy Sheehan, is a hero too. Angered that her son was sent to fight and die in an unjust war for reasons that have proven to be lies, Cindy is speaking out about the Iraq invasion. Cindy has joined other moms and families who have lost loved ones in the conflict to tell Americans about the true costs of the war. Their group, Real Voices http://realvoices.org/rv/index.html , is running television ads featuring the voices of Americans like Cindy speaking directly to President Bush about the impact of his failed policies and lies.

We are honored to bring you our interview with Cindy Sheehan about her son Casey and why she decided to speak out about the Iraq war.

* * *

BuzzFlash: Your son Casey died April 4 in Iraq. Whom do you hold responsible for your loss?

Cindy Sheehan: George W. Bush.

BuzzFlash: Why?

Cindy Sheehan: I think he rushed into this war -–this invasion –- without having proper intelligence. And the reasons he went are so clearly wrong -–from his false claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to there being no connection between Iraq and Saddam and Osama bin Laden. He diverted attention and troops and resources from Afghanistan and Al Qaeda to Iraq.

I don’t think Iraq has anything to do with the war on terror, except now terrorists are crossing the borders to go and kill innocent Iraqis and our troops. So he went almost unilaterally, with very little international support, to invade a country. They didn’t have a plan for the peace or for the occupation of Iraq.

My son was killed by Shiite insurgents. I believe George Bush created the insurgency by his failed policies and that’s why my son was killed.

BuzzFlash: Tell us a little bit about Casey. What kind of a young man was he? I know he was only 24 years old when he died.

Cindy Sheehan: He was an amazing person. He has been an altar server for 10 years. He finally quit when he graduated from high school and asked me, ”You know, Mom, can I quit altar serving? Can I be an usher or something now at Mass?“I was the coordinator of our youth Mass at our parish. And he was an Eagle Scout. He was a Eucharistic Minister, and he had trained to be a Eucharistic Minister in the field when they went to Iraq, to help the priest. But he was only there for two weeks before he was killed on Palm Sunday. He never missed Mass.

He had joined the Army because they promised him he could finish his college degree. He had already been going to college for three years before he joined the Army. My husband and I just went to Ft. Hood a couple weeks ago because the Catholic chapel he always went to was starting a new Knights of Columbus Council, and they decided to name it after Casey. It’s the Specialist Casey Austin Sheehan Knights of Columbus Council because they say that his love for his God, his church, his country and his family embodied what they want to stand for.

He was amazing. He was just the most calm and peaceful and gentle person that anybody would ever know. He was so quiet, but he had such an impact on everybody’s lives. And he was so brave. He saved American lives, but our question is, what are any of them doing there?

BuzzFlash: Casey, as I understand it, technically did not have to go to Iraq since he was a field mechanic. Is that correct?

Cindy Sheehan: He was a Humvee mechanic. He re-enlisted in August of 2003 because he didn’t want his buddies to do the job by themselves. It’s all about what they’re doing now — our soldiers are trying to keep themselves alive and trying to keep each other alive at this point right now.

BuzzFlash: When did Casey receive news that his unit was being sent to Iraq?

Cindy Sheehan: I think it was probably around last October, 2003, because they went to the National Training Center (NTC) at Ft. Irwin in the California desert in November. So we knew before he went to Ft. Irwin that they were going to be deployed sometime in March. Casey knew the First Cavalry was going to end up going to Iraq when he re-enlisted.

BuzzFlash: Did you have any correspondence with Casey while he was in Iraq before he was killed? Did he say or did you hear about what the situation was like on the ground?

Cindy Sheehan: He called me one time from Kuwait. They still hadn’t gone to Iraq. And he never complained. He said that it was hot and he was really busy because he had to get their vehicles ready to go on the convoy from Kuwait to Baghdad. He was on his way to Mass, and we talked about when he stopped in Ireland to refuel. We’re Irish, so he found an airport employee that was telling him about the history of our name, the Sheehan name.

He started writing us a letter on March 31st, because we didn’t know where we could send him mail or presents or supplies or anything yet. They didn’t tell them until they got to Saudi City where we could send them things. But he started writing us letters. And he said the convoy from Kuwait to Baghdad was real peaceful, and it looked like it was going to be an easy year of deployment. He wrote that on March 31st, and he was killed April 4th.

We never got the letter. It was in his things that we got from Baghdad. He didn’t even finish it.

BuzzFlash: President Bush told you, Casey, and every American, that we needed to invade Iraq to remove weapons of mass destruction — an assertion that, as you said, has proven to be a lie — and to fight terrorism, which is also untrue. When Casey left to go to Iraq, did the two of you talk about why you both felt that the United States was in Iraq, and what the United States was fighting for?

Cindy Sheehan: We didn’t understand why the United States was there. We never thought that Iraq was an imminent threat to the United States. But Casey told me, ”Mom, this is what we trained for. I’m ready. It’s my job. Because the sooner I get there, the sooner I’ll come home.“And he came home three weeks later in a flag-draped coffin.

BuzzFlash: Right now you, along with many other families who have lost loved ones in Iraq, are speaking out in various ways, part of which is a television ad criticizing Bush’s decision to mislead our country into a war. What made you decide to speak out, knowing the toll that it would take on you?

Cindy Sheehan: I have to. I can’t bring my son back. I can’t go back to April 3rd and bring Casey home. I can’t stand on the side while other mothers and families will have to go through what we’re going through. I have to speak out, and I have to help try to bring the troops home.

No matter who wins November 2 -–I hope it’s Kerry -–but no matter who wins, we have to hold them accountable. We have to start putting pressure on our elected officials to bring our troops home from the most unjust and mess of a war that our selected president has got us into.

BuzzFlash: Every month, there have been higher and higher American casualties.

Cindy Sheehan: Except for April, that was the highest. That’s the month my son was killed.

BuzzFlash: Right now, the situation is clearly deteriorating into a civil war. As a mom who’s lost a son in this war, how do you respond when you hear the president say that we need to stay the course in Iraq?

Cindy Sheehan: I respond: How can you stay a course that is so obviously not working? You’re going the wrong way. If you’re on a wrong course, you turn around and go the other way. He has betrayed us. He’s still betraying us, by telling us that everything is going well there. It’s shameful.

BuzzFlash: What would you say to President Bush if you could sit down in the same room and speak to him directly?

Cindy Sheehan: I actually got to meet face to face with the president. He called me ”Mom“ because he didn’t know my name, and he didn’t know my son’s name — he just knows that he’s meeting with these families that have lost loved ones. He said, ”Mom, I can’t imagine the pain you’re going through.“

I said, ”I think you can imagine it a little bit, Mr. President. You have daughters. How would you feel if one of them was killed?“